President Barack Obama talks on the phone from his private office in the White House residence as he participates in a tele-town hall with Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) , August 3, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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President Barack Obama listens as Michael Bennet rejects his offer to go to Ray’s Hell Burger (Photo by Rahm Emanuel)

Now, I need to play it straight, but I have a feeling you team Michael and team Andrew supporters will be unrelenting.

A vacancy committee today appointed Angela Giron to fill the remaining term of state Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, who is resigning his Senate District 3 seat to accept a position as director of the Colorado Lottery.

Giron, of Pueblo, is the sole Democratic candidate on the primary ballot for the District 3 seat, which includes most of Pueblo County, most of the City of Pueblo, Pueblo West and Beulah. However, Eric Taylor of Pueblo has filed as a write-in Democratic candidate.

Assuming Giron wins, she would go on to face the winner of the Republican primary between Vera Ortegon and Alexander Lucero-Mugatu

Giron worked for 27 years at Boys & Girls Clubs, including as vice president of operations. More recently, she served as a regional representative for U.S. Sens. Ken Salazar and Michael Bennet.

President Barack Obama’s portrait is a step closer to hanging in the state Capitol thanks to former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and his wife, Wilma.

The couple has donated $2,500 to the effort, which will cost $10,000.

“We’re pleased to contribute and we hope other contributions follow in suit,” Webb said in a statement. “President Obama’s election and his service are historical for our country and Colorado should be proud to recognize him.”

A portrait of every president from George Washington to George W. Bush hang in a third-floor gallery at the Capitol. The majority of the portraits were donated by an Arizona couple in 1979, while state funds and private donations paid for the portraits of Ronald Reagan, both Bush presidents and Bill Clinton. House Majority Leader Paul Weissmann, D-Louisville is leading the effort to raise money for the Obama portrait, which is to be painted by a Colorado Springs artist.

“All of the U.S. presidents’ portraits should be on display at the state Capitol,” Wilma Webb, a former state representative, said. “We are happy to contribute.”

McInnis’ spokesman, Sean Duffy, said the ad is a sign that Democrats see McInnis as a threat.

“Since the conventional wisdom for the last several weeks is Scott McInnis is dead in the water, it is very interesting that the Democrats (are) spending thousands of dollars to help choose the Republican nominee,” Duffy said.

(Update at 5:09 p.m.: Team Romanoff asks me to round out this post with yet another instance in which the good folks at The Statesman talked with Romanoff about the DSCC. I do so below. Also, FYI, I trust The Statesman’s reporting on this thing, which their editor stands by.)

Romanoff sat with a reporter from The Statesman for an interview immediately following a Jan. 19 press conference where he declared he was still running for the Senate — after rumors swirled he was instead considering a run for governor — and made his most uncompromising statement to date about his refusal to take money from political action committees, which he labeled part of an “incumbent protection racket.”

“Andrew said what he said in response to a direct question about the DSCC,” said Statesman editor Jody Hope Strogoff, who has covered Romanoff’s political career for more than a decade. “If he’d like to make a case he was answering a different question than the one he was asked, he can do that. But he’s had more than six months to correct the record.”

Colorado Statseman: What about the national Democrat Senatorial (Campaign) Committee? You had said earlier that you weren’t counting on getting financial support if you won the primary, or you wouldn’t take it?

Andrew Romanoff: Actually, this interview that you and I did, I don’t recall answering the question in the way that you all attributed it to me.

[Editor’s note: Following a press conference in January when Romanoff announced his intention to stay in the Senate race, The Colorado Statesman asked whether his position refusing to take support from political action committees extended to any support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is a PAC, should he win the nomination. Romanoff answered, “I don’t welcome the outside interference,” and went on to reiterate his opposition to taking money from PACs.]

Arizona Sen. John McCain is stumping and fundraising for GOP Senate hopeful Jane Norton this weekend in Arapahoe County and Grand Junction in a trip the former Lt. Gov. said she hopes highlights differences between her and her primary opponent Ken Buck on Afghanistan.

Norton called McCain “the foreign policy conscience of America.”

“Ken Buck’s fundamental misunderstanding of the fight against terrorism is both reckless and dangerous,” Norton said in a statement. “Terrorists aren’t taught the tools of ‘cost benefit analysis’ at terror training camps.”

The move is an interesting one during the primary since many Republican base voters don’t like McCain because of his stances on campaign finance and immigration reform. Norton hasn’t always proudly brandished her affiliations with the Arizona senator –her brother-in-law was one of his chief advisers in 2008 and she worked on his behalf in Colorado to get him elected president.

Scott McInnis’ first campaign manager asked for and received his campaign donations back.

George Culpepper donated $200 to the campaign last fall. The money was returned on July 21, according to McInnis’ campaign records.

His wife, Nicole Culpepper, had $30 in donations returned, according to reports filed Monday with the secretary of state.

In addition, the campaign returned $1,000 to Lenore Dahl, who has a Vail mailing address. She could not be reached for comment.

McInnis has been under fire since July 12 when The Denver Post reported portions of water articles he was paid $300,000 to write were plagiarized. Asked if the plagiarism charges prompted his request, Culpepper issued the following statement:

“We felt it was more important to focus on our family rather than supporting candidates. Our voice in this election came to us a few weeks ago – the ballots – and we have had our say. It is now up to the people of Colorado to determine the outcome on Aug. 10.”

McInnis faces Dan Maes in the Republican primary Tuesday.

Last September, McInnis announced with great fanfare that Culpepper was going to run his GOP gubernatorial campaign, but Culpepper was gone by December. Culpepper has said he was leaving to do other political work, and has never publicly discussed the situation.

President Barack Obama and Sen. Michael Bennet at the Fillmore Auditorium earlier this year. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

President Barack Obama is taking the unique step of speaking at a joint telephone town hall with U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet this evening, a last minute White House effort to help Bennet wiggle through a difficult primary.

Democratic Senate hopeful Andrew Romanoff’s campaign manager Bill Romjue told Politico today that the campaign would accept money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which received $1.17 million in June alone from political action committees.

Romanoff has built a campaign touting that the biggest difference between incumbent Democrat Michael Bennet and himself is that Bennet is in bed with special interests because he accepts money from political action committees. The former House speaker has daily called money from special interests “unholy.”

“There is clearly a connection between the millions of Americans who are losing their jobs … and the Wall Street banks that stand in the way of financial reform,” Romanoff said in a Denver Post/9News debate Saturday. “I’ve been very specific in this campaign there is just no reason that some of the most powerful corporations in the world … no reason those companies would spend millions and millions of dollars in Congressional campaigns if they didn’t get something in return.”

But Romjue said that apparently the campaign is planning on making an exception with the DSCC, which accepts money from banks and big tobacco PACs, according to the Federal Election Commission.

“The Colorado legislature continues to increase spending using any means it can devise — one-time funds from the Feds, increasing fees and raiding cash funds. Taxpayers, your pocketbook and your liberty
are under assault!” the report declares.

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.